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I’ve never been to the same gym as Eric Drinkwater, a sports scientist at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia — in fact, we live more than 1,000 kilometres apart — but as soon as we started talking on the phone, we discovered we shared the same gym instructor, half a world away in Los Angeles.
We are just two members of a growing cohort of people who are not tied to a schedule or venue and are being trained online by coaches they have never met. This is a phenomenon that has been waiting to explode since the advent of the internet and smart devices, and the COVID-19 pandemic has provided the catalyst to make it explode.
In 2016, fitness app downloads were just over 200 million. In 2022, due to the pandemic, that figure was closer to 900 million, with only a slight decline in 2023. As the coronavirus spread around the world, many gyms were forced to close temporarily, but when they reopened, many people’s exercise habits changed and some, like me, never went again.
But is there any difference between working out alone at home rather than in a group or crowded gym? After all, there are many proven benefits to exercising with other people. “The social aspect of fitness training is important to many people,” says Drinkwater. For example…
